


All the Birds in the Forest

by iridiah



Series: Niris Hazan [3]
Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Cobalt Company, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Implied Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Pre-First War, Truly Excruciating Transcribed Accent, World of Warcraft: Classic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:40:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 12,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29786610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iridiah/pseuds/iridiah
Summary: Please note that this story is setPre-First War in World of Warcraft. Because of various inconsistencies between the strategy games, novelizations, the MMO itself, the movie, wiki timelines and Blizzard retcons, this may all be very timey-wimey with respect to the "actual events" and the order in which they occur. If you are working with a hard and fast and also very different timeline, that's okay; call this an AU, in that case.
Series: Niris Hazan [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2188818
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	1. A Scout in the South

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that this story is set _Pre_ -First War in World of Warcraft. Because of various inconsistencies between the strategy games, novelizations, the MMO itself, the movie, wiki timelines and Blizzard retcons, this may all be very timey-wimey with respect to the "actual events" and the order in which they occur. If you are working with a hard and fast and also very different timeline, that's okay; call this an AU, in that case.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruari Keane arrives in the Kingdom of Stormwind, and likes what he finds.

The southern forest had a different quality from the northern ones of Ruari’s experience: it felt  _ younger _ , somehow. The shadows were less heavy, the trees less rigidly sentinel against a weight of history. There were no craggy towers of pine, only a gently spreading green canopy, rustled by wind and shedding droplets of sunlight across the forest floor. That forest floor wasn’t a dense carpet of golden needles, either, but a green-leafed quilt flecked with unfamiliar flowers. It smelled of rain and earth.

They came across a windfall of little bronze apples on the second day; apples grew wild in these gentle woods. Dafydd collected as many as he could find that weren’t wasp-stung and filled his saddlebags. They ate them that night after a meal of hardtack and jerky, camping by a glassy river, and the apples were still crisp but tasted of autumn frost and brandy.

There were wolves in the woods, but that was to be expected, and familiar enough. The thing that was unfamiliar was the two scars they came upon. 

They weren’t new, and the woodland green already unfurled delicately in places to reclaim the land, but splintered and blackened wood still told its tale. The stink of char still hung in the air when the breeze brushed across.

One of the scars held the broken ruins of a homestead, little more than foundation-stones and some charred and contextless walls. The other was inhabited by the collapsed wreck of a primitive ballista. Ruari and his men rode close to this and circled round it in grim silence, considering the craftsmanship.

It wasn’t pretty, but it looked effective enough. The stuff used to make it had clearly been scrounged from the countryside around, not brought in -- shrewd and adaptable builders. Ruari didn’t love that.

He  _ did _ love the rest of it, he decided.

#

Northshire Abbey first appeared as a graceful white wall built across the narrow break between two foothills east of the city. There was a double gateway set into the wall, a sturdy precaution that Ruari approved, but beyond the gates a peaceable vale opened up. 

The white stone Abbey was flanked by wings of outbuildings and a tidy, tranquil cemetery. The cobbled courtyard ended in a clean-swept stable row and a smith-yard. Behind these were spread a broad, rolling slope of sunlit gardens, and across a fat-running brook on the other side of the Abbey buildings lay a vineyard.

There was also, less peaceably, a low-slung row of barracks built behind the cemetery, a newer construction of still-green wood, with soldiers in steel and Stormwind blue loitering around it. This group watched his own arrive, some looking distinctly less friendly than others. 

Ruari lifted a hand to them briefly and nodded. No sense making enemies on their own side. They were going to have to work with these people, and these people were going to be relying on his lot, whether they knew it yet or not.

There was no scout company to match Fox across the whole of Gilneas or Stromgarde. In most of the north, he’d have wagered. He reckoned they might show the south a thing, as well.

He was swinging down from his horse when Martin whistled low and said, “Oi, lads, now  _ there's _ a fellow’s welcome.”

Ruari glanced in the direction his men were gazing, and felt briefly rocked on his heels.

A priestess was crossing the yard from the garden toward the Abbey. There were two others trotting along beside her, but Ruari didn’t see them, because there was  _ her _ . 

She was a long, lean, dark-skinned girl, and the swing of her white robes as she strode -- she  _ strode _ , like a girl who knew where she was going and what she meant to do when she got there, and you could keep out of her way or get strode over -- said  _ Legs _ in a serious way. The low sweep of her neckline made some pretty promises, too. Her hair was black as crow’s wing and swept back as sleekly as the same, and her eyes were a gold richer than any king ever had for a crown. She was carrying a basket of garden greens against her hip and talking briskly to the trotters-along as she went. 

Martin, the damned fool son of a bitch, whistled again, this time deliberate and loud enough to carry, and the priestess glanced at them without breaking stride. The golden eyes raked Martin indifferently, and then she looked away, dismissing him with an eyebrow and the line of her mouth.

“Light above,” groaned Martin, and reeled dramatically against his horse’s side. “Did you see it, lads? I’m in  _ love _ .”

“Ach, shut it, man,” Ruari said, and turned back to unbuckle his horse’s girth. “You're an arse, is what you are.” 

Martin O’Reilly was never going to have a girl that class. 

Martin O’Reilly was never going to have  _ that _ girl, and he, Ruari Keane, knew it, because he knew he was going to have her himself, and that was that. 

He was in love.

#

Her name was  _ Niris Hazan _ , which first of all was like no kind of name you’d hear in the north, and second of all was about the prettiest Ruari had ever heard. 

He didn’t have to ask it of anyone because his lads all knew it by nightfall, because  _ they’d  _ asked. Not from the girl herself, not after she’d half-murdered Dafydd with a look and a few cool words that sent him away looking scalded, but the Stormwind soldiers were happy enough to supply it. Mostly because, it seemed, a fair number of them had tried it on once or twice themselves -- even a couple of the girls had, which Ruari admired -- and they were pretty smug and ready to see a new lot of fellows get sent packing in the same ways they had been.

Ruari didn’t mind that. If it meant his lads found their fit among the Stormwind ones sooner rather than later -- minor miseries made for fellowship -- so much the better. Also,  _ he  _ had no plan to get sent packing. 

He was going to bide his time and let the rest of them play fools all they pleased. No chance that  _ Niris Hazan _ would have her head turned first by one of them -- he loved his lads like brothers, but they were a pack of clowns with the lasses -- and meanwhile, he’d get the lay of the land, as a good scout should.


	2. Stillroom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Niris meets Ruari, who has met a plant.

A shadow fell across Niris from the doorway of the stillroom. 

She didn’t glance up from her bottling, because if it was someone from the Abbey who had business with her they’d say so, and if it was one of those bloody soldiers, most would slink off if she ignored them long enough.

This shadow didn’t slink, though. Nor did it speak.

“What  _ is _ it?” asked Niris at last, still measuring clear alcohol into the bottles of bruised herbs.

“Beg pardon, miss. Didna want t' interrupt.” The male voice was polite without being diffident, and though the accent had become wearisomely familiar over the last couple of weeks, the voice itself was not. Niris glanced up toward it.

It was the captain of the northern scouts; she didn’t know his name but had seen him with the rest of them in the yard. He was the only one of the lot who hadn’t come at her yet, and so she braced herself for the attempt. Straightening, she plucked up a linen to towel off her hands, turned to prop her hip against the workbench, and folded her arms across her chest. “Is there something I can help you with?”

He didn’t blink at her tone. He didn’t look, in fact, that much concerned by her opinion of him; his expression was mild and serious. “Weel,” he said in his northern drawl. “I’d nae trouble ye, on’y I must've met a ting tat disagrees wi' me, an’ it smarts like heel.” He cleared his throat. “Beg pardon. It smarts, miss. T’ey in infarm’ry said ye’d have a salve.” He stepped into the room -- not closing with Niris, just so they stood in the same light -- and rucked up the sleeve of his shirt.

His left forearm was a mess of sloughing red skin and seeping pinprick blisters.

“Oh, damn,” said Niris, genuinely dismayed, and then cleared her own throat. “Er -- dear. Oh, dear. That’s poison ivy.” She looked up to search his face, and found hazel eyes glinting merrily at her, though his expression remained somber.

“Pizen ivy, miss?” Thick black brows drew together.

“Yes, it’s -- hang on.” Niris couldn’t look at the painfully-inflamed rash a moment longer, though the man stood as if untroubled. She turned to search the shelves above her workbench, found the jar she wanted, and plucked it down. “Sit.” She pried the cork from the jar and the pungent mingled scents of silversage and frostbloom filled the air.

He looked around himself.

“Just there is fine,” she said, nodding at the clear end of the workbench, and he perched dutifully but carefully on the edge of it, arm still extended. Niris took up her linen rag to daub a thick smear of salve from the jar. “Do you not have poison ivy in the north?”

He shook his head. “Nart’ern ivy’s tame, miss. Ne’er seen it try t’ murder a man afore.”

Niris pressed her lips against a smile. “It’s a different plant from proper ivy. Now, I’m not going to touch it directly because it’s contagious, after a fashion. You’ve been scratching it, I can tell, and you mustn’t. If you break the blisters, you’ll spread the rash around.”

“Ach,” he said, faintly embarrassed. “Weel, ta’ does explain some.”

Niris looked up at him narrowly. “How long have you had this?”

He shifted his weight. “Tree days.”

“Three days! Why on earth didn’t you see someone sooner?”

He looked away, his ears pinkening. “It were on’y me wrist a’ first. Seemed a bet o’ fuss for a wee itch. Hate t’ be a fuss.”

Niris studied him in profile a moment.

He wasn’t a bad-looking man. He was, she allowed privately to herself, a  _ good _ -looking man, actually. She liked the build of him, broad across the shoulders but still lean, the forearm he extended to her hard with muscle but not made like a ham. His fair northern face had been bronzed by wind and sun, and if his nose had the uneven lie of a fighter’s, his mouth was gentle-set. He was crowned by an unruly mess of wavy black hair, too shaggy around the ears and over his forehead, and he was in want of a shave, but -- yes, Niris decided. A good-looking man.

She looked back down at the blistered, angry arm. “Hold still.”

He nodded agreeably without looking back at her face. She began to spread salve in a thick layer over the inflamed skin. She knew from experience that this particular salve stung before it soothed, and he did tense briefly; he didn’t wince away, though, and remained dutifully still.

When Niris was finished plastering his arm from the back of his hand to his elbow, she set the jar and greasy linen rag down on the workbench and stretched up past him for a roll of fresh linen gauze from the shelf. “I’m going to wrap it so you can’t scratch,” she said. 

When she set down on her heels again, she found him staring at her. His pupils were wide black pools in a summer halo of hazel. He looked away from her at once, casual, and Niris flushed.

“I shouldn’ta,” he admitted sheepishly, and for a disconcerted moment she thought he meant he shouldn’t have stared, but he was looking down at his arm. “On’y I reckoned t’were on’y a bet of an itch, till it got angry.”

“Well,” said Niris, and began wrapping his arm briskly. He sat patiently still once more. “It  _ will _ clear up on its own, given a few days -- or weeks, depending on the severity -- but the more you scratch the longer you’ll have it, because you’ll just keep giving it to yourself again.”

“Et’s some fair vicious plants ye’ve got doun here, miss.” He flexed his hand, testing the tightness of her bandage, nodded approval, and rolled his sleeve back down. “Don’t s’pose ye can tell me how t’ watch for et, sae’s I don’t make t’ same mistake twice?”

She wound the linen-roll back up, set it down, and reached for her charcoal pencil and formula-book. She tore a blank back page from the book, laid it flat on the workbench, and began to draw in quick strokes. “It’s got three leaves, like so. They’ll be very green usually, dark green, and shiny. You’ll find it in the undergrowth looking like any other plant, but the root of it’s actually a vine, so look out for it on tree trunks as well. If you see a vine on a tree that looks like  _ so _ \-- sort of … furred, coarse-haired -- even if it hasn’t got the leaves, best leave it be. You can get the rash even from the vines.” She handed him the sketch.

He studied it somberly, nodded, and folded it to tuck into a pocket. “I’ll let t’ lads know.”

Niris set her pencil down again. “You might also let them know, while you’re at it, that I’ve never met a weaker-jointed lot. I’m going to prescribe all of you a course of bone meal and fish oil if they keep coming to me complaining of twisted ankles.”

“Ach.” He raked a hand through his hair, black brows drawn together again. “Pack o’ fools. I’ll tell ‘em, miss, and beg yer pardon. T’ey won’t be wastin’ yer time no more.” He straightened from the worktable, flexed the hand of his bandaged arm again, and nodded at her.

As he stepped through the door and back out into the yard, Niris called after him, “Captain. What’s your name?”

He paused and glanced back over his shoulder at her, his brows lifted. “Ruari, miss. Ruari Keane.”

Niris nodded and crossed her arms tightly over her chest. “I’m Niris Hazan.”

He showed her the fleeting ghost of a smile. “Aye, miss. I know.” 

And then he was gone.


	3. Shadows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fox Company meets a menace in the forest.

Ruari’d never seen an orc before, but it was hard to guess he was looking at anything else. The thing moved upright like a man, but it was broader than two men together, and it had a flat face with tusks like a boar. Its skin was mire green, its black hair braided with bones, and its piggy little eyes swept its surroundings constantly, warily. It was clad in leathers and carried an ugly crescent-bladed axe. It wore a heavy crossbow on its back.

He wondered -- belatedly and grimly -- whether the bestial-looking thing could hear or smell like a beast could. He was still downwind of it, but as it eased its cautious way through the undergrowth -- and nothing that size should move so quiet, Light damn its eyes -- it would be on the other side of him soon enough.

He pushed himself stealthily backward along the heavy branch to get upright, and pressed his back to the tree’s trunk, bracing himself with one booted foot. He scanned the sunlight-shifted shadows behind the orc. Were there more of the things? One advance scout or lone hunter, he could probably take. A party of them, probably not. 

He knew the rest of his lads were ranged in the trees around him, but he also knew the closest was Alf and he was a good fifty paces off. Ruari had the drop on this one now, but if it got past him he’d lose a clean shot, and if there were more of them and him alone to face them, he might be fucked.

In the general forest chatter of birdsong and insect buzz, he heard a faint  _ see-lip, see-lip _ trill. It was a bird’s song, but no bird that inhabited these southern woods: it was the call of a dusky flycatcher, out of Gilneas and Silverpine.

So Alf had seen the thing, too. And now the others would be on alert.

Still a gamble, but his odds were better. 

Ruari took a slow breath, drew and sighted, exhaled and loosed the arrow.

It wasn’t a killing shot: he caught the orc in the throat. But he’d already nocked and drawn again, and as the thing staggered and reached up to grip the arrow-shaft jutting from its neck, it turned its face to find its assailant in the trees, and this time Ruari got it clean through the eye. It folded and fell.

He waited, breathing easy, a third arrow at the ready.

The orc didn’t stir. Nothing else stirred behind it.

_ See-lip, see-lip _ the illusory flycatcher called again, and this time Ruari answered it with the rasp-whistle of a grey shrike. He slung his bow and eased down from his perch to a lower branch. When the forest still yielded no more orcs, he dropped softly to the ground and went to examine his kill.

The rustle to his right was Alf coming to join him, and then Sammy and Martin melted out of the greenery too. They all four stood looking down at the massive corpse in grim silence.

“Must’ve come out of the mountain pass. Deadwind,” ventured Sammy.

“Must’ve,” agreed Ruari. “Only they haven’t been spotted this far west since Lothar’s lads drove them back across the Borderlands.”

“Well.” Alf shifted uneasily. “It’s why we’re here, aye? Stormwind said they were stirring again.”

“Stirring east of Grand Hamlet and in the mountains,” Ruari said. “But if they’re here now, they’re stirring a hell of a lot faster even than Stormwind knew.”

“Reckon we’d better tell ‘em,” said Alf.

“Reckon so.” Ruari crouched to retrieve his arrows, wiping them on the grass, and then, after a hesitation, drew the knife from his boot to cut off one of the orc’s coarse, bone-knit braids. “We’ll take this back to the Abbey, show Captain Ames.”

“Aye,” said Sammy, who had straightened again and was scanning the forest in the direction from which the orc had come. “And let’s do that straightaway, before whoever this one was scouting for shows up.”

“Light forfend,” said Ruari, and tucked the braid into his quiver with the stained arrows. “Let’s go.”


	4. Mushrooms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Niris collects more than she set out for.

Niris had just knelt down in the woodland leaf-litter to cut the pale trumpet mushrooms that always sprouted after an autumn rain, when she heard someone rustle.

It was a deliberate sound, the scuff of leaves by someone who’d made no noise approaching but wanted her to know that they were there, rather than take her completely unawares. She glanced up.

It was Ruari Keane, the Fox Company captain. He nodded at her.

He was dressed all in fading shades of woodland brown and grey, the easier for melting into shadows, she guessed, and his soft-soled boots made him silent on the ground. He wore a slung shortbow and quiver of arrows, and his fog-damp hair was pushed back from his face.

“Miss,” he said.

“Captain.” She bent back to her work.

“What’re ye doin’ out here, ten?”

“Cutting mushrooms,” she said without looking up. “Are you going to tell me it isn’t safe for a lady?”

When he didn’t answer she looked up, and found him studying her somberly. That glint of humor was back in his greenish eyes again, though. “Nae, miss, wouldna dream.” He glanced to the north and she knew he was assessing her distance from the Abbey all the same. He looked back at her. “I reckon ye know what yer about. On’y we  _ have  _ spotted an orc few days back, te lads an’ me, cross t’ river sout’ of Sunnyglade.”

Niris’s hands stilled briefly of their own accord. “I see,” she said. “Do they know? At the Abbey?”

“Aye.” He leaned shoulder-propped against a tree. “I tol’ tat Captain Ames.”

“Well, he might’ve told the  _ rest _ of us,” Niris said. And then, “Still, ‘the river south of Sunnyglade’ is a ways away.”

“Is,” he agreed affably.

Niris returned her attention to her brisk work. Her basket was filling quickly; she wouldn’t be much longer.

Keane hadn’t moved. “Are you going to stand there?” Niris asked him.

“Ach, sorry,” he said. “Were ye usin’ tiss tree?”

She looked up narrowly. He still didn’t smile at her, his expression mild. “What if I were?” 

“Weel, ten, I’d be out o’ yer way. On’y I know yer not, on account of I been sittin’ in it for a half-hour an’ some.”

Niris flushed. “I didn’t see you there.”

He tapped the side of his nose. “Tat’s t’ idea, mostly, aye?”

She looked him up and down. “So what brings you to the ground, then?”

“Reckoned I’d see if ye wanted a hand. Ye can send me packin’ if I’d be underfoot.”

Niris sat back on her heels and wiped a wrist across her forehead. “Do you know mushrooms?”

“Dunno t'ose ones,” he admitted with a nod at the trumpets. “But I know if it’s mushrooms in general ye want, ye’re missin’ a few of ‘em.” He stepped silently past her and crouched to push aside the branches of a silverleaf shrub at the foot of the nearby oak. All down the tree’s base, it had sprouted a cascade of silvery fungus. “Wood chickens,” he said, and glanced back at her.

“Hen-of-the-woods,” she agreed, and flicked him a glance. “You’re right, I didn’t see those.”

He held out a hand wordlessly, and she passed him her little knife. He turned back and began deftly to cut the mushrooms from the tree. “Now,” he said, “ye talk like a city lass, on’y I don’t reckon ye are one.”

“Oh?” Niris watched him, hands flat on her thighs. “Why don’t  _ ye reckon _ that?”

He cast her the flicker of a smile at her impression of his accent and then went back to his work. “Ye work hard, ye make no fuss, ye don’t mind some dirt. Ye know yer way aroun’ plants, animals, an’ yer no’ squeamish. Ye do a ting as needs doin’ an’ ye do it well, an’ no one needs t’ ask ye or praise ye for it.”

Niris felt abruptly like she’d swallowed part of a sunrise. Outwardly, she only raised her eyebrows. “I take it you don’t have a very high opinion of _city lasses_.”

He glanced back again and made a face at her, then shrugged and offered out a fistful of hen-of-the-woods. Niris took it and put it in the basket, and he turned back to the oak tree. “Maybe no.”

“I grew up on a farm,” she said.

“Oh, aye?”

“In Westfall. It’s -- west of here. My family has a place north of Moonbrook.”

“An’ ye didna want t’ farm yerself?”

Niris shrugged, though he wasn’t looking at her. “Too many brothers, too much underfoot." Too much to say about that, so she didn't. "I like my own work.”

He nodded and handed her another ridge of mushrooms. She put it in the basket.

“Where are you from?” she ventured after silence. 

“Gilneas,” he said. “Sort’ve.”

“Sort of?”

He gestured vaguely at the trees around them with her knife, and then offered it back to her. “T’ forest. Silverpine. Family was Gilnean.”

“You’re  _ from _ the forest?” Niris pocketed her knife.

He gave her a wry look. “Da were a poacher. It were a dishonest livin’, but at least it were a bad one.”

It took Niris a moment to hear the dry joke, but then she laughed. He grinned back at her. She decided she liked his grin.

“When did you leave it? The forest?”

He shrugged again. “Da hanged when I were ten or ‘leven. We moved aroun’ some, an’ at fifteen I run off an’ joined t’army.”

“Hell,” said Niris, staring. “I’m so sorry.”

He raked a hand through his hair and rose to his feet. “Man makes his choices, aye?”

She didn’t have an answer for that, and gazed up at him. “They let you join the army at fifteen?”

That faint flicker-smile again. “I were tall for me age. Tey didnae ask a lot of questions.”

Niris collected her basket in one hand and her skirts in the other and rose as well. He didn’t offer her a hand up, which she appreciated. “But you didn’t stay in the army proper.” Fox was part of a larger mercenary outfit, she knew. The north _proper_ still seemed to think the orc invaders were a southern problem.

“Weel,” he said, and fell in beside her. He matched his stride to hers. “Ting about t’army is tey’re always puttin’ some lad wit’ a mighty title in charge o’ tings, an’ half tem lads havnae got t’eir heads screwed all t’ way on yet. Rat'er answer t’a man who got where he got on account of knowin’ what he’s about.”

“Fair,” said Niris. “I suppose I’d feel the same.”

He glanced sidelong at her and showed her a crooked smile. “Aye,” he said. “Reckon ye would.”


	5. Spelling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruari and Sammy have a literate discussion, and share wisdom about women.

Reinforcements from Stormwind’s own had arrived. Ruari liked this, because it meant all the better defense, but he also didn’t like it, because it meant Stormwind was feeling his own unease.

Most of his lads, pleased not to be the newest any longer, were making friends with some of the blue boys, sitting around a firepit outside the Stormwind lot’s barracks. He could hear them, gusting talk and laughter, raucous in the evening air. Ruari felt a little hennish, sometimes, about the noise, what with the Abbey and the clerics and all, but if the clerics themselves didn’t complain, he reckoned it wasn’t worth riling the boys over.

“How the hell is it spelled, again?” asked Sammy irritably. He was sore to be sat in Ruari’s tent writing a letter for him when all the rest of them were out there.

“E - o - g - h - a -n,” Ruari said, and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “How the hell would you spell it, man?”

Sammy gave him a black look. “O - w - e - n. But then again, I’d spell Ruari, R - o - r - y.”

“Well,” said Ruari, “not my fault you Lordaeron lads never learned to spell.”

“And who’s writing this letter, again?”

“I can  _ spell _ ,” said Ruari with great dignity. “I just can’t -- make the letters go straightways.”

Sammy, grumbling, leaned over the paper again. “‘Dear Eoghan’ --”

“You don’t have to say ‘dear,’ man, ‘Eoghan’ will do.”

“Who’s  _ writing  _ this damned letter, Ruari Keane? You say ‘dear’ at the start, that’s how it’s done. It’s letter-manners.” Sammy narrowed eyes at him. “Get on with it. What next?”

“Next.” Ruari leaned back against the center tent-pole, closed his eyes, and considered. “Next, you say, ‘Send me Gran’s ring, care of Northshire Abbey, Stormwind. Your brother, Ruari.’” He opened his eyes and made a dusting-off gesture with his hands. “That’s it.”

Sammy was staring.

“What?” Ruari asked, after the stare went on too long without any writing happening.

“That’s  _ it _ ? You last saw your brother -- when?”

Ruari frowned and cast back in memory. “Eight -- no, damn, it’s ten years gone now.”

“And so you’re going to  _ write _ him and you’re just going to say, ‘Send me a ring, sincerely, your brother’?”

Ruari stared back at him. “It’s all I need him to do, isn’t it? And don’t say  _ sincerely _ ,  _ sincerely  _ sounds shite. He knows I’m sincerely his bloody brother.”

“Does he, though?” muttered Sammy, and bent over the paper again. Ruari listened to the pen scratch.

When Sammy was finished, he held the letter up for Ruari to sign. Ruari gave it a one-over. There was a lot of  _ dear _ and  _ I’d be obliged _ and  _ wishing you well _ and  _ sincerely _ that he certainly didn’t say to put in it, but he grudgingly signed it beneath his printed name:  _ RK. _

“And what,” asked Sammy, too casually, as he took the letter back and folded it, “do you want this ring of your Gran’s for?”

“What does a fellow want the family ring for, Sam Adler?”

Sammy gave him that narrow look again, warily this time, like he thought Ruari might be having him on. “Only you haven’t got a girl, Ruari Keane.”

“Haven’t yet. But I will, won’t I?”

Sammy knitted his brow. “ _ What _ girl, man?” And then -- and Ruari hadn’t meant to look, he hadn’t, but it was a helpless reflex now sometimes -- he followed the flick of Ruari’s gaze to the little paper stitched to the back wall of the tent, above Ruari’s bedroll. 

_ Poison Ivy _ , it said in a neat, spiky hand, and beneath it a pair of charcoal drawings: a trefoil leaf, and a bristling vine. 

“ _ No _ ,” said Sammy, and looked at Ruari like his head had just opened up and he’d started raving in tongues. “You  _ never _ , man. That Hazan girl? Ruari, have you  _ talked _ to her?”

“Twice,” said Ruari. “Twice, I have. Where do you think I got that from?” He gestured at the drawing.

Sammy took a deep breath through his nostrils, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You  _ got _ that,” he explained carefully, like Ruari needed explaining to, “on account of you got a  _ rash _ and went to  _ show it to her _ . Which is not really the foot most lads want to start on with a girl.”

Sammy liked to talk like he knew everything about women because he was the eldest of their lot and the only one who’d been married before, but he’d been married three times in his thirty-two years, which suggested that maybe he knew less about women than he imagined.

Ruari knew that Sammy was wrong about  _ this _ girl. But he was a diplomat and a gentleman when he needed to be, because managing a company was about respecting each of his lads and what they could do and their fellowship together, so he said, “Ach, get fucked. What do you know about it?”

“I know,” said Sammy, rising to his feet and thrusting the folded letter at him, “that you’d probably better do more than show your rash to a girl before you write away for the family ring.”

“I’m not planning to use it straightaway,” Ruari told him. “But it’ll be a while getting here, anyway.”

Sammy just eyed him up and down at that.

“Not a word of it,” Ruari warned him, as Sammy stepped toward the tent’s exit. “Not a  _ word _ to any of the lads.”

Sammy paused, still bent halfway through the tent flap, and looked back at him. “Well, no, I’d better not. They’ll all think you’ve fallen on your head. Martin’s going to take a swing at you, y’know, when he does hear it. He saw her first.”

Ruari folded his arms. “That’s not how it works, and you know it as well as Martin O’Reilly does. Lasses aren’t mining rights, you can’t stake a claim by getting there first.”

“No?” Sammy eyed him up and down again. “Then what are you in such a hurry for, Ruari Keane?”


	6. Delousing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Niris knows about lice, but Ruari knows about soldiers.

There were new Stormwind soldiers at the Abbey, which meant new headaches for Niris. They’d brought lice with them, it was discovered. Half their bedrolls had to be burned, and then there were lice-baths and lice-oil and combing to be done, and Light be praised that she’d put up plenty of oil in the spring and the baths could be handled by Brother Fedor and his pair of sturdy novices, Paxton and Neals. But the combing fell to her and Marnie and Aurella, none of whom relished standing close with a lot of louse-ridden soldiers who maybe hadn’t seen any woman who wasn’t a fellow-soldier in months and combing their hair for them for hours on end, and never mind Niris’s suggestion they just shave the poor fellows.

“There are _knights_ among them,” Prior Walter had told her gravely.

“And it’s a rule that knights can’t have their heads shaved?”

The old man drew down his bristling brows at her, paternally severe. “It suggests ... uncleanliness. These aren’t young men we can disgrace casually.”

Niris resisted an urge to stamp her foot. “First of all,” she explained patiently, “it’s _lice_ , not the weeping pox, and second of all -- whether it’s _beneath them_ or not, they’ve _got lice_. We can’t just wish lice away, or inform the lice these men are of noble birth and hope they’ll pack up, and meanwhile they’ll have shared them round the whole Abbey inside of a week. And then there are the potential blood diseases, and the --”

Prior Walter rapped his cane sharply on the tiled floor to silence her, and Niris wadded her fists in her skirts and bit back a scream. It reminded her so clearly of how Pa would hit the nearest thing to stop her talking -- _BANG, Shut_ up, _girl, I done told you once_ \-- it was such a _male_ thing to do, to hit something instead of using words, to hit something to stop _her_ words, like a threat.

Old Prior Walter didn’t mean it for a threat, Niris supposed, but there were things a girl heard the threat in regardless of how they were meant. And regardless of how it was meant, it was bloody _rude_.

But she held her tongue, to keep from screaming.

On her way out of the Abbey, she passed Ruari Keane coming in. He smiled at her. She didn’t smile back.

"Miss?" he asked, and stopped. 

Niris, against her judgment, stopped too, a weary and exasperated distance from him. If _one more man_ wanted _one more thing_ \--

“Pardon me for sayin’," he said gently, "but ye look like yer off t’ set a ting on fire, miss.” His eyes searched her, his expression genuinely concerned.

Niris looked away from him. “I wish,” she said bitterly.

Keane folded his arms, glanced at the direction from which she’d come, glanced out at the Abbey yard. “Need a hand?”

She blinked at him. “With what? Setting something on fire?”

He shrugged. "Or buryin' a body. Sommat like."

She couldn't tell whether he was serious. He certainly didn't seem to be teasing.

"Do you have lice?" she demanded.

He blinked but, to his credit, didn't appear affronted. "I do not." And then, narrow-eyed, "Who does?"

Niris waved a frustrated hand toward the Abbey yard. "Who doesn't? Half of them. The new ones brought it, and they'll pass it quick enough if we don't stop it. But there are knights among them, so the Prior won’t let us just shave their heads and be done. He wants us -- me and a couple of the other girls -- to spend two or three days _combing soldiers for nits_.”

Just for a moment, Keane’s expression did something a little bit dangerous, and Niris felt a queer flutter. And then it melted away just as quickly, and he was her grave conspirator again. “I tell ye what,” he said, low-voiced, and glanced back at the Prior’s office. “I tell ye. _If_ ye're willin', once ye’ve had a moment -- I say ye go back in t’ere. I know ye won’t like it, and I can’t blame ye for it, but I know also tat yer a lass who wants ta get a ting done, an’ I do believe tiss is t’ quickest way: Ye go back in t’ere, an' ye smile at him an' ye tell him meek as a lamb tat he’s right about t’ knights, an’ ye wouldna dare touch a hair on t’eir handsome heads. But t’ rest of ‘em, t’ common soldiers an’ peasants an' whatnot, tey’ve got no notion on hygienics, and for tem it’s got ta be done. Ye’ll just shave t’ common lot, and let t’ knights be.”

Niris stared at him. “And then what?”

He shrugged, showed her half a grin. “And ten ye do just tat. An’ let nature take ‘er course.”

_Nature taking her course_ meant the knights just giving everyone fresh lice in a week or so, so this advice made no real sense to Niris. But also: “I’m not going to -- _smile_ at a man just because I’m told to.”

Keane shook his head somberly. “And I’d ne’er tell ye to, miss. On’y ye want ta get a ting done, an’ sometimes t’ quickest way t’ do it’s wit’ honey rat’er t’an common sense, when t’ man yer talkin’ to hasna got none o’ t’ latter. Yer not smilin’ cos he’s askin’ ye to. Yer smilin’ cos ye got a ting as needs doin’, and a man like him, he’ll be took in by a smile afore he will by good sense.” He paused to consider. “Matter of fact,” he said, “ye tell him while yer at it tat ye don’t reckon t’ knights need dippin’, neit’er. It’s just t’ poor dirty fellas as does.”

“But that’s not true.”

“Aye, an’ ye know it and I do and anyone wi’ a lick o’ sense do. But will ye trust me on it and try? Because I reckon ye know all about lice, but I know all about soldiers. Aye?”

Niris stared at him, and then she took a deep breath, turned on her heel, and went back to the Prior’s office.

#

She’d retreated to her stillroom for coffee and a moment’s peace after a long day of shaving and louse-dipping disgruntled soldiers when she heard the commotion in the yard. She listened for a moment, set down her coffee cup, and went out to look.

When she’d gone into the stillroom half an hour ago, the scene had been much like this: the crowd of milling soldiers, sour-smelling from their baths and shave-headed to the last man and woman -- save for the dozen noble sons, who had avoided both ignoble fates and stood apart from the rest, looking half-disdainful and half-uneasy.

But they hadn’t stood apart for long, it seemed. As Niris watched, three more of them were dragged sputtering from the louse-tubs by their fellows-in-arms, and two were being held down in the yard to have their heads and beards shaved forcibly by the same, even as they kicked and swore.

Niris folded her arms and leaned in the doorway.

Just past the barracks and the ruckus of the knights being loudly and heartily deloused by their comrades stood the little circle of tents that belonged to Fox Company. She wasn’t the only one enjoying the spectacle; the men of Fox were sitting or sprawled before their tents, watching as well.

They had all to a man, Niris noted with faint surprise, had their heads shaved as well.

It was hard to spot Keane among them at this distance without his unruly mop of black hair, but then she saw a lanky form straighten from where he’d been leaning and lift a hand to her briefly. She couldn’t read his expression from here. After a hesitation, she raised her own hand back and nodded.

It was hard to tell, but she thought he smiled.


	7. Payday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruari's lads have the night off.

The pay packet came down from Stromgarde. Long Barrel sat in Ruari’s tent to pay it out, and one by one, the lads filed past, already jostling and full of talk about the pub down in Goldshire. 

“You stay down there,” Ruari warned them, as Dafydd and Alf went by. Martin with a few pints in him had less sense than a goose, but those two would keep him in line till morning; he didn’t like the idea of his boys with their belts full of pay-money on the nighttime road. It wasn’t orcs that worried him, not so far north ( _not yet_ , whispered a disquiet voice), but trouble of a more ordinary, human sort. “You _stay_ down there till morning once you’re down, and you spend your pay as you please, but try as not to spend it _all_ , and try as not to bring anything back but hangovers, or it’s the priestesses here you’ll be explaining yourselves to.”

The Stormwind lads said the girls in Goldshire were clean, but Ruari didn’t know how far that counted if the Stormwind lads had got there first.

When Long Barrel himself emerged from the tent finally, he cocked an eye up at Ruari and said, “Left yers on the table.”

Ruari nodded at the dwarf and straightened up from where he’d leaned. 

Of all his lads, it was the dwarf who looked queerest with his shaved head, the orange stubble growing back in now all over on chin and scalp alike, like his whole head was on fire. Ruari knew dwarves were proud of their beards and braids and such, and he’d felt pretty bad asking the Barrel to shave, but Barrel didn’t love noble lads any more than Ruari himself did, so when Ruari explained it was to stand with the common soldiers and show the knights up, he’d took up his razor as happily as the rest.

He was a hell of a dwarf, the Long Barrel of Aerie Peak was.

Dafydd had dwarf blood in him too, somewhere back, which was why he was as short and sturdy and all over hair as he was, and Ruari thought privately maybe why he was as handy with an axe as he was -- but a man didn’t say that out loud, in case it was the wrong kind of racial assuming, and you could give Sammy and Jace grief for being Lordaeron boys but it was another thing to give a dwarf any kind of grief for being a dwarf -- and the dwarf blood made sense, Dafydd being Arathi and the Wildhammers right there. Long Barrel himself was a Wildhammer, only he liked his gun better than a gryphon, and Fox Company was the luckier for it.

He was _Long Barrel_ for the gun, not on account of his barrel-shape or being any longer in any respect than any other dwarf -- not so as Ruari cared to know, anyway -- though the lads would have a go about that now and again and Barrel certainly didn’t seem to mind. (And that wasn’t racial assuming, but pure laddishness.)

Barrel clapped Ruari on the arm now. “Ye comin’ with?” 

Ruari shook his head, and the dwarf nodded and went off after the others.

They all knew Ruari didn’t drink, which they looked on good-natured as a harmless oddness, but nor was he in want of a girl, not with a one like Niris Hazan in his sights. So off the rest of them could go to drink and carouse up their pay, and here he’d stay and be a well-mannered lad and maybe even sound husbanding material.

Not that _she_ was thinking that far ahead, not yet. But Ruari was a patient man.

#

As it happened, young Brewster stayed behind as well. He had no interest in the girls down in Goldshire -- or anyplace else, for that matter -- and wouldn’t spend his pay on drink because he saved it up dutifully each packet to send back to his mother and sisters in Andorhal. He was a good lad, Jace Brewster, even if hardly old enough to shave, and he took in stride Ruari’s and the rest of them’s jokes about his age and his being from Lordaeron. Sammy might occasionally snarl at a fellow about the Lordaeron stuff, but Jace just rolled his eyes and went quietly back to whatever he was up to, and Ruari liked that kind of steady temperament in a fellow.

He was sitting by the fire now, whetting his knives and whistling quietly, with an open bottle by his foot, and when Ruari came out of his tent Brewster looked up and nodded respectfully. 

“You in for a quiet night, then?” Ruari asked him, and sat across. Jace didn’t offer the bottle, as he would have to any of the other fellows, because he knew Ruari wouldn’t take it.

“Maybe, sir,” said Jace, and glanced over toward the Stormwind barracks, and there was a blue boy over there across the way at that fire looking back at him.

“Ah,” said Ruari, and grinned, and Jace flushed but didn’t exactly look sore about it.

“Well,” said Ruari, “I’ll not be in your way, then,” and got up.

“Oh, no, sir, you can stay,” protested Jace, with none of his heart in it, and Ruari laughed. Jace ducked his head, smiling himself. “What will you do with yourself, then, sir?” he asked.

“I reckon I could sit here and wait for you to stop calling me _sir_ , but who’s got that kind of time?” Ruari looked around the quiet Abbey grounds, fading prettily in the twilight. “Might just go for a walk about. Might have a swim, if the river’s not killing cold yet. Been a while since I saw the inside of a bathtub.”

“They have bathtubs in the Abbey, sir,” Jace reproached, and looked Ruari up and down. “If it’s a good wash you want, a swim alone’s not going to do it. You’ll need soap, at least.”

“Aye, Mum, if you say.” Ruari scrubbed a rueful hand across his shorn hair. “You have soap?” 

Jace sighed at him, and set his knives and stone aside, and got up to go into his own tent.

The soap he came out with was a neat square-cut piece -- it had been square-cut, but it was rounded at the edges now because Jace was a cleanly fellow himself -- with the Abbey mark stamped deep in its surface. It was the yellowy color of new cream, and it didn’t smell like soap but sharpish and fresh, something familiar but not quite. Ruari sniffed it again to place it. “Ach. It smells like the stillroom.”

“Yes,” said Jace. “I got it from the stillroom girl. That priestess Martin’s stupid about.” He shook his head in weary disgust. “As if.”

Ruari couldn’t help himself; he laughed. “As if,” he agreed, and went back into his own tent for a change of clothes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NB: Long Barrel, aka Bargrimm Flintspark, is a guildmate's OC. (/waves at Jack)


	8. Crowns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruari eavesdrops. Flirting happens?

The river wasn’t killing cold yet, despite the fact that Ruari could smell frost creeping in the nighttime air. Not killing cold, at least, for a northern lad; he had it to himself in the tranquil blue evening, and a couple of the Stormwind boys had looked askance at him as he’d headed down that way.

He went all the same down to the very far end, where it curved past the vineyard, away from eyes, and soaped and scrubbed and rinsed, and then floated a while on his back in the slow current and sang to himself. When the cold began to reach him, he swam to the vineyard shore where he’d left his things and mopped dry with his old shirt before pulling on the changed clothes. He felt like a fresh man. 

There were rabbits in the vineyard, and he stayed a while to watch them nose about beneath the vines as darkness sank in. They were fat, fed on the Abbey’s gardens and green, and he considered snaring a few -- but then, he didn’t know how the Abbey would look on that, and he had a long shyness of other people’s game.

He strolled the long way back along the vineyard’s edge toward the footbridge. Just as he set foot on the bridge, though, he caught a sound and hesitated, listening.

It was girls’ voices in the darkness. They were round the other side of the massive old oak across the bridge, and they were laughing, and he knew one of them.

He crossed the bridge as quietly as he could, which was pretty damned quietly, and went silently across the grass to lean on the other side of the tree. He shouldn’t, he knew, but sometimes curiosity was a fire a man couldn’t help but put his hand in.

“... like plucked ducklings, the lot of them,” said one of the girls Ruari didn’t know. “It wasn’t _fair_.”

“You’re only cross because that Sir Welham turned out to have no chin without his beard,” said Niris. There was an imp in her voice Ruari hadn’t yet heard. He swallowed laughter.

The third girl laughed, though, and after a moment the first one, the plucked-ducklings girl, joined too. “Oh, Light have mercy, it really is terrible, isn’t it?” 

“See?” the third girl said. “You were spared a chinless fate.”

“And if they’d only let us do it properly in the first place,” said Niris sensibly, “they wouldn’t have gotten sheep-shorn by the others.”

“It was _awfully_ clever,” said the third girl. “Good for you. I was _shuddering_ at the thought of combing them all.”

There was a tiny pause, and then Niris said, very casual, “It wasn’t properly _my_ idea.”

“No?” Ducklings-girl was surprised. “Whose, then?”

Another little silence, and then Niris said, still very casual, “It was that Captain Keane. The northerner.”

Ruari liked the way she said _Captain Keane_. So did one of the other girls, apparently, because she made a sort of smug "Oooh!" sound. Ruari couldn't tell which girl it was but he blessed her in his head.

"Tch," said Niris primly. "Stop that." And then, "Did you know they don't have poison ivy in the north?"

Neither other girl was much interested in that fact, it seemed. " _He_ looks all right, doesn't he?" Third Girl asked. When Niris made no answer, she added breezily, "I do like a blue-eyed man."

"His eyes aren't blue," Niris corrected straightaway. "They're hazelly."

Ruari rested his head against the tree and grinned as the other two girls dissolved into peals of laughter.

"Oh, _stop_ it," Niris said again, embarrassed and a little pleading this time.

"Shame," said Ducklings. "I saw them all go out earlier, down toward Goldshire. The northerners, I mean."

"Oh," said Niris, and then primly again, "Well, it's no business of _ours_."

Ruari eased from the tree and backtracked silently to the river and over the bridge. This time when he came over, he scuffed the planks and whistled a tune low, as if to himself. 

When he ambled past the oak, hands in pockets, he cast a glance that way, casual, and saw three young priestesses in their white and blue dresses sitting upright and staring at him.

Niris was wearing a lopsided flower-crown, tiny yellow blossoms starry against her sleek black hair, and held a second one half-woven in her fingers.

Ruari halted, as if startled himself, and nodded cordially to the three. "Evening, misses."

Niris crept a hand up as if to pull the flowers off, but then remembered her natural dignity and put the hand down again. Ruari was glad. He'd never seen anything better. 

One of the other girls cleared her throat, but Ruari didn't look at her. He hadn't looked at either of the others. The crooked flower crown on that sharp, stern girl was doing a thing to his insides.

"I think," said Throat-Clearing Girl, who was also Third Girl, "that Lisbet and I are wanted in the library."

"Oh," said Lisbet, who was Ducklings. "Right. Coming, Marnie." The pair of them scampered. When they'd gone round the Abbey corner, Ruari heard them pealing laughter again. 

Niris looked down at the flowers in her hand and then back up at him. "Captain Keane," she said politely.

"Miss Hazan," he said, even politer. "But you can call me Ruari, miss."

She looked down at the flowers again, as if she had to consult them on this point. After a moment, she picked up a blossom from the tidy heap of them beside her on the grass and resumed her weaving. "I heard you'd gone down to Goldshire."

"Not me, miss. Just the lads."

"Oh," she said, still intent on her weaving. 

"Do you mind?" he asked, but didn't elaborate, so she was obliged to look up at him, a line between her brows. He gestured at the grass. "If I sit."

“It’s public grass,” she said mildly, and Ruari didn’t take it amiss because he knew she was still feeling flustered. He could see, this close, that her color was high, and he liked that almost as well as the flowers.

She went back to her weaving, and Ruari sat comfortably, took his dirty clothes from his shoulder to set them behind him in the grass, and set the square of soap on top of them. 

Niris glanced at him, made a quick, golden-eyed survey, and then looked back to her own deft fingers twining stems. “You look different,” she said. “With your hair shaved.”

“Well, aye,” he said, and ran his hand self-consciously across the stubble.

She gave him a narrow sidelong look. “I thought you said you didn’t have lice.”

Ruari leaned back on his hands. “I didn’t, miss, nor any of the lads. But it wouldn’t do for us to stand round looking like a pack of knights when all the other common boys was getting shaved, would it?”

This time her sidewise look was sly. “ _A pack o’ knights_ ,” she mimicked, and then laughed a little to herself, softly.

Ruari grinned at her. After a moment he said, “What’s that one, then?” and again didn’t elaborate, so she had to look her little question-furrow at him again. When she did, he tipped his chin at her hands. “The flower. It’s what?”

“Oh,” she said. “Peacebloom. It’s the autumn bloom, the last of the year. The flowers are smaller and all yellow this time of year, rather than white and yellow.” She’d gone back to watching her hands work, and he watched them too, and watched her neckline a little, maybe. 

The night air was getting crisper, and he imagined laying his hand flat there on that smooth dark triangle of skin to feel the heat of her, the fine sharp line of her collarbone, the soft thrum of her heartbeat.

There was a gust of laughter from over by the barracks, around the corner, and they both looked that way. When he glanced back at her, she was still watchful in that direction, her hands still and her head up sharp, wary as a deer in a glade.

“They give you trouble?” Ruari asked her.

She cut him another look, then shook her head and went back to her flowers. She didn’t relax again, though, and he knew she was lying. But after a time, without any pressing from him, she said quietly, “There’s just -- a certain kind of man I don’t much like. I grew up with a lot of them. You find a lot of them among soldiers, too.”

“Ach,” said Ruari. “I’m sorry.” Sorry and a little angry.

She gave him a longer look this time, searching, and then nodded.

“You manage ‘em well,” he told her. “You’re a hard lass.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“It’s a compliment,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, and continued to study him. He watched her back, mild. “Some people think I’m cold, or unkind. Is that what you mean by ‘hard’?” 

“No,” he said. “I mean you handle yourself, and you don’t pretend different for anyone as thinks otherwise.”

She canted her head and her own flowers slipped a little more. Ruari wanted to slide over and fix them for her, but resisted that itch.

“And anyone as thinks you’re unkind isn’t paying attention,” he said. “No one _unkind_ ever worked as hard and ungrudging to look after so many as you do.”

She lowered her lashes. After a moment she said quietly, “Thank you, Captain.”

He shrugged. “Paying attention’s my trade.”

Niris considered him again. “I suppose it is, isn’t it?” Her gaze flitted behind him, to the clothes. “And what are you doing this evening, then, if not going to Goldshire?”

“Swimming,” he said. “Well, a bath and a swim.”

“Bloody _hell_ ,” she said, and heard herself a moment too late. Ruari started laughing at the look on her face. “I beg your pardon,” she said, dark-stained with embarrassment.

“No, no.” Still laughing, he waved her off. “No, go on, miss and look what you’re talking to. It’s fine.”

After a moment, she gave him a quick, soft sliver of smile, a little impish like he’d heard in her voice before. “Well. Wasn’t it _cold_?”

“I’ve swum in plenty colder. We’re a long ways south, for me.”

“Oh,” she said, and then reproachfully, just as Jace had earlier, “There are bathtubs in the Abbey, you know.”

“I do,” he said. “But I don’t like to impose.”

“A man who doesn’t bathe is just a different kind of imposition,” she said tartly.

He laughed at her again. Light, but she was a sharp girl. She was sitting with her long legs tucked beneath her in the grass, a little queen in her crooked flowers, and Ruari was aching to do some terrible things to her. _Good_ terrible things. He wanted to put her down in the grass and ruck up that skirt, he wanted to bite her ear and the clean, curving line of her throat, he wanted to feel her squirm and press up under him, hear her gasp his name.

“I bathe,” he told her instead. “I just did, didn’t I?” 

“Hm,” she said, primly skeptical, but her golden eyes gleamed merrily. She tied off a knot, and then the second crown in her hands was finished. She held it up to examine it.

“Who’s that one for?” Ruari asked politely. 

“Well,” she said, “it was for Marnie. But she went and left me, so.” She rose to her feet, smoothed her long skirts, stepped over to Ruari and bent to lay the crown lightly on his head. 

He could smell her, so close up, warm and clean and faintly flowers. She brushed a finger briefly across his shorn hair, a curious and childish gesture, and said, “Good night, Captain Keane.” 

And then she was striding off across the grass, toward the noise of people and the Abbey lights, and Ruari was sat alone in the grass, giddy as a hare under his own wilting crown of stars.


	9. Menace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Niris is caught, but doesn't much like her rescue, either. 
> 
> CW for threatened/implied sexual assault and domestic violence.

For three days after the silly business with the flower crown, Niris didn't see Captain Keane at all, until she could only conclude he was avoiding her. 

It _had_ been silly, him a soldier and worldly and who even knew how old, and her an Abbey girl of just barely twenty, but at the time it had felt all right: _glowy_ , even. 

She'd gone to bed that night on a cloud, and said not a word about it even to Marnie but only smiled like a cat when the other girl begged for details. She had felt _sophisticated_ , almost a seductress.

But the next morning she woke and thought about putting a garland of weedy flowers on a grown man soldier's head and touching his hair _(soft but bristling velvet)_ like a child and had felt like she might burn to death from embarrassment. She hadn't wanted to see him, had hurried all day to and from her work across the yard with her head down, and had been rewarded.

But then she didn't see him the next day, or the next. Embarrassment turned into the flinty certainty that _he_ was avoiding _her_. And that, in turn, sparked a little flame of anger that kindled like her chest was full of straw. So when she heard the accent in the yard on the fourth day, she reacted too quick. 

"Weel," the voice drawled from behind her. "T'ere y'are, miss, and jus t' sight ta welcome a man home, I must say."

The _accent_ was right but the _voice_ was wrong -- but she didn't think of that before she'd already wheeled to confront him. 

It wasn't Captain Keane. It was that other one, the big fellow with the shock of yellow hair -- before he'd shaved it like the rest -- and the open, affable face, and the glint of meanness in his eyes that Niris recognized all too well from growing up. It was the face of a man that other men liked on sight and women learned to avoid. O'Reilly, his name was. 

He'd aimed himself at her doggedly a few times already -- he’d passed from charm to wheedling to nuisance, and apparently was moving on to menace -- but she'd always been among a group of other girls or managed to evade him.

Not this time.

He grinned at this unexpected success. He was dusty and stained, gleaming with perspiration, and an equally dusty horse stood behind him. Several horses, she realized.

"Oh," she said, as chagrined revelation dawned. "You've been away."

"Aye," O'Reilly said, and made himself comfortable a step closer to her. She tried to see past him to the rest of the returning scouts, but the man made a damned wall. "Ye miss me, t'en, girl?" He took another step, and so Niris, despite her effort at freezing dignity, had to take a step back. He did it again, and so did she, and he grinned at her like they were waltzing. "I confess I been missin' _you_."

"I have work to do," she said, her voice not as sharp or cold as she meant to make it. It was that stupid blocky face of his, the friendly, frank expression and the hardness in his eyes. "I need to get by." She wanted to slap him, but she knew what happened sometimes if you slapped a man like this.

"Ach, but ye've been lan'some wi'out me, I can tell, jus’ stood out here waiting. Dinna rush away now, sweet'art." He loomed, and reached for her as though he meant to touch her face --

\-- and then he was hauled back off his feet and dropped sprawling onto the stones. 

Captain Ruari Keane stood over him, not looking at Niris, his back angled toward her, all his attention on the man on the ground. "Get up," he said, low-voiced. O'Reilly tried, and Captain Keane kicked him in the ribs. O'Reilly doubled with a grunt and stayed down.

"I said _Get. Up._ " Keane's hard-edged voice was louder now, and all around them the yard had stilled, everyone frozen and staring. Niris did not want to be here in the middle of this, she was shaking all over and wanted to be invisible.

This time when O'Reilly pushed himself up, Keane let him rise -- and then he stepped in close and hit him in the gut, so fast and hard Niris didn't see it coming and jumped, shocked. O'Reilly hadn't seen it coming either, and folded again with a groan. As he sank to the ground, though, Keane took him two-fisted by the collar and hauled him back up, walked him three staggering steps backward, and shoved him with a splash into the horse trough.

He stood over the spluttering, gasping O'Reilly. "When I tell ye," he said -- and he said it calmly and not loud but you could have heard a leaf fall in the yard -- "When I _tell_ ye ta leave t' Abbey girls alone, I don't reckon I'm gonna hafta tell ye more'n once, Martin O’Reilly. But if it's a hard rule for ye ta follow, ye can fuck off back ta Stromgarde, because Fox don't need ye and I'm not _half_ sick o' yer shite. Hear me?"

O'Reilly glared sullenly up at him.

Keane kicked the side of the trough, sloshing it again. "I asked did ye _hear_ me, lad?"

O'Reilly wiped water back from his eyes with one grimy hand and nodded. "Sir," he said. 

"Get t' fuck out o' t'ere an' look useful, eejit." Captain Keane turned on his heel and stalked back to where a handful of other Fox Company stood by their horses watching the whole scene, bedrolls and saddlebags half-unloaded. None of them looked either surprised or dismayed, and when Keane rejoined them, they all went mildly back to their unpacking, as Martin O’Reilly thrashed like a landed fish trying to get out of the trough.

Captain Keane hadn't looked even once at her. Niris was abruptly and queasily glad of that.


	10. Supper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marnie delivers cold supper and a belated message

Niris kept herself in the stillroom the rest of the afternoon, trying to keep her hands busy _(steady, keep them steady, mind your measuring)_ and her mind occupied. She snapped at the little novice who brought the infirmary orders when the girl startled her coming in, and then she apologized probably too much to judge from the girl's bewildered look as she'd gone out again, and then she sat and had a stupid little fit of tears, and then she got up and got back to work. 

By suppertime she was recovered but still didn’t feel like facing the rest, so she stayed and worked. There would be winter cough soon enough, and chilblains among the soldiers no doubt, and other cold-weather ailments, so there was no shortage of things to occupy her. She was running low on bruiseweed but this time of year it would be plentiful in the drier foothills beyond the Elwynn River. She’d need whatever beeswax and tallow could be spared from candlemaking, and would have to send to Redridge for stores of lanolin. They hadn’t received any in months.

That thought settled coldly over her and she paused in her work. 

_Orcs._

There were orcs in Redridge -- had been, at least, before Sir Lothar had broken them, and Lothar and his Brotherhood had driven them back through the mountain passes and into the swamp. But if Redridge was silent again -- _remained_ silent --

A knock at the stillroom door startled her. It was only Marnie, bringing her a covered plate and a tankard. “You have to eat,” she reproached Niris, and stepped in to survey the crowded workbench. “Light, but you look like you’re massing for war.”

 _Massing for war,_ Niris thought, and wiped her palms on her skirts. _I shouldn’t be preparing for chilblains and cough. I should be preparing_ \-- No. She would know, surely; they would know, if such a thing was happening again. She smiled briefly at her friend. “Winter on the way.”

“Hm,” said Marnie, and shifted some bottles with a forearm to set the plate down. “Well, so is your supper; here. There’s roast carrots and cold chicken and oatmeal with stewed fruits, though I’m afraid that last is just mush in all respects. Neals and Rickard were cooking tonight, so the chicken’s leather as well.”

Niris laughed. “Well, bless, all the same.” Her stomach was gripping tight with hunger, now that there was food within reach. She raised an inquiring eyebrow at the covered tankard Marnie set beside the plate.

“Tea, I’m afraid,” Marnie said ruefully, but then waggled her own eyebrows conspiratorially and lowered her voice to a whisper though they were alone. “And a good third of it I made up with the Prior’s whiskey.”

 _“Bless,”_ said Niris more fervently, and toweled off her hands.

Marnie propped her hip against the workbench and surveyed Niris. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“About what?” Niris asked, deliberately casual, and lifted the cover from the dish to examine it. Roasted carrots would be edible at least. Which meant perhaps she should save them for last.

“About that -- _beast_ in the yard this afternoon.” Marnie had been a confidant since early days, since Niris had turned up at the Abbey just fifteen years old, in her threadbare shawls and sacking dress and too-big boots, and Marnie was another country girl and they’d stuck together. Marnie knew about mean-eyed, angry men as well.

“No,” said Niris. “What’s to say?”

“Well,” said Marnie, watching her levelly. “Your Captain Keane did for him.”

Niris was nettled. “He’s not _my_ Captain Keane. And was he so much better? I don’t like men who talk with their fists, Marnie. You know it as well as I do.”

“I do,” said Marnie. “But I also know that sometimes men like that O’Reilly who talk with _their_ fists won’t _listen_ to anything but, either. And I think that may be what that was. I don’t recollect hearing that Captain Keane so much as raising his _voice_ at any of them before today, much less his hand. They don’t brawl the way the Stormwind fellows do. They’re a very laughing group, mostly.”

Niris considered this in silence and ate a carrot. It wasn’t seasoned at all, and roasted a little unpleasantly past tenderness, but it was food and it was all right. “Well,” she said. “Maybe. I don’t _know_ the man.”

“Speaking of him anyway, do you know what Lisbet confessed at dinner?”

“That she’s a stuck-up cow?”

Marnie laughed. “No. That Captain Keane came around a few days ago looking for you, but when he couldn’t find you I guess he recognized Lisbet from the other night, and he told her to tell you that he and some of Fox were going out for a few days.”

Niris felt an odd sensation: a prickling, spreading warmth, like someone trickling hot bathwater over her shoulders. “Oh. Well, why would he want to tell me that? It’s not my business.”

Marnie rolled her eyes. “Don’t be a goose, you know I won’t fall for it. I think he means to _make_ it your business. Anyway, Lisbet decided not to tell you because she’s a stuck-up cow, and because you exposed her true love as a chinless fraud. But apparently it’s occurred to her since this afternoon’s scene that Captain Keane might be vexed to learn she hadn’t passed his message.”

Niris laughed. “What, does she think he’ll put _her_ in the trough?” It was the sheer absurdity of it, the fact that Lisbet could even contemplate such a preposterous notion, that settled in Niris the thought that Marnie was right. She knew in her bones that Keane wasn’t a man to raise his hands for just nothing. She couldn’t even _see_ it, which was half of what had shaken her this afternoon. 

“Well,” said Marnie. “He’s only a dirty common northerner who talks funny, not a _knight_ or a city boy in armor, so you know perfectly well what Lisbet thinks of him. He’s probably a step up from an alley drunk and two steps down from a street thief.”

“Stormwind must have _very_ posh street thieves.” Niris was nettled again, but this time on the Captain’s behalf, she realized. She ate another bland carrot to cover this disquieting revelation.

“I’m sure Lisbet thinks their alley drunks are posh, too, by comparison with anything you or I’d got at home. So she gives your Captain a _little_ credit.”

“He’s _not._ My. Captain,” Niris repeated.

“Hm,” said Marnie, and straightened from the table. “Well. Eat your supper before it gets any … worse. Or honestly I suppose there’s an equal chance it might get better. But.”

Niris made a face. “Thank you. I suppose.”

Marnie laughed and took her leave, shutting the door behind her.


	11. Shadows Lengthen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruari has two unpleasant conversations.

The cat was pretty much out now about Miss Hazan, since Ruari’d not lost his temper like that with Martin in who knew how many months, and -- as Sammy had predicted -- Martin himself had come at Ruari again later out back of the tents, when at least the entire damned Abbey wasn’t watching.

Ruari’d laid him out again, though it was a nearer thing this time since it was Martin who’d took him by surprise rather than the other way round, and he was feeling it for sure in his ribs. But it had cleared the air, at least, and now it was properly established that Martin O’Reilly and the rest of them was to stay well clear of Niris Hazan, because Ruari himself had eyes on her and wouldn’t be crossed. 

Martin was still a little sore because he was half-sure Ruari’d packed them all off down to Goldshire a few days back so he could get under Miss Hazan’s skirts, which Ruari was quick to assure him -- the hard way -- hadn’t happened, because that wasn’t how you go about a girl like her, but also what the fuck was he complaining about because anyway he’d been bragging about being under a couple of skirts himself in Goldshire that night? It settled Martin smugly, at least, to know that he’d been having some and Ruari none, which Ruari didn’t care about and so let him be smug.

Besides, they all had worse to worry about.

“You’re _sure_ of it?” Stormwind’s Captain Ames leaned over the map Ruari’d brought him back, glowering at it.

Ruari resisted impatience. “Aye, sure. They've got their own scouts making a push down here where I marked, and burning as they go. You’ve just lost a few acres of farmland on the southern end of the river between Brightwood and Westfall -- I had to break a couple of my lads off to escort a handful of refugees up the road to Elwynn and that western garrison of yours, and they said it was a greenskin band -- and in the east they’re coming in packs through Deadwind from the Morass. They’re brewing something around Grand Hamlet, massing south and east of it.”

“Well.” Ames touched a mark on the map himself, toward the center. “The King’s put the Defender here to hold the heartland, and he’s well dug-in.”

Ruari had some thoughts about this, and none of them complimentary, but he held his tongue on those. “Aye. I’m just saying it might do to set more men in the eastern woods, and fortify Grand Hamlet.”

“I have no command,” Ames said, “over Grand Hamlet.” He rolled Ruari’s map up decisively, but then hesitated and nodded wearily at him. “I appreciate it, though. I’ll do what I can to get word around.”

Ruari nodded back, weary himself, and straightened from the table they’d both leaned on.

Ames was still studying him. “What are the chances,” he asked slowly, “that you could get a few of your boys to the other side of Deadwind and into the Morass itself, see what they’re up to out there?”

Ruari’s pulse picked up. It would be a hell of a trick, but -- _a hell of a trick_ was what Fox did best. “I reckon maybe,” he allowed. “It’d take some doing. Not a lot of cover for a scouting band in Deadwind itself, from what I’ve seen, but -- aye, maybe. I’ll go over the charts and have a think.”

Ames nodded. “Good,” he said gruffly. “Good. Don’t want to lose you or any of your boys, Keane, you do good work. But if there’s anyone who _could_ do this for us --”

“Aye.” Ruari flashed him a grin. “That’d be Fox, sir.”


End file.
